Dear readers, thanks for your ongoing interest in my writing here on the blog. Today, a non-descript Monday in a liminal part of the year, seemed like a good time for me to do a little housekeeping here on the blog. Here are some notes and answers to a few questions that seem to linger out there among readers and commenters:

Dissertation: My committee has approved my dissertation for a public defense on April 25 at 4pm on the Princeton Theological Seminary campus. It’s open, so you’re all invited. That committee has also suggested many more revisions, which I’m now in the process of making. I need to have two hard copies of the revised dissertation to campus two weeks before the defense, so that it can be read by those attending my defense. At the defense, I’ll be encouraged to make more changes, and that version will be due at Princeton the first week of May. Then PTS will send it to a dissertation editor who will check all the formatting and tell me what changes to make. Then, sometime this summer, I’ll mail three copies of the final-final-final version — on linen paper no less — to Princeton for binding and placement in the library.

Rob Bell: My post on Monday, February 28 on the Rob Bell-John Piper tête à tête amoureux was the most-read post in the history of my blog. By a long shot. I attribute that to two things: 1) Sarah Bailey added a paragraph from my post to her much-read online article about the controversy; 2) lots of people were retweeting my post with comments like, “This is the best thing I’ve read on the #robbell controversy.”

In the next couple days, I’m wrapping up Draft No. 3, the penultimate version of my dissertation. Kenda Dean, my advisor, will look it over, and early next week she’ll distribute it to the other three members of my dissertation committee. How this works is, Kenda tells them which page numbers of the dissertation will most interest them — usually, the sections where I deal directly with their work. While they, of course, can read the whole thing, professors’ schedules being what they are, they may not get to it.

Kenda will then funnel their observations back to me, later this month, and then I’ve got until March 15 to make those revisions, format the thing to very exacting specifications, and get it in hard copy to the PhD Studies Office at Princeton (Theological Seminary).

Among the finishing touches I’ve had to put on is the acknowledgements section. While I won’t disclose the entirety just yet, here’s what I wrote about Kenda, [Read more…]

After a few blessed weeks of not thinking about it, my dissertation arrived last week via overnight messenger from Kenda Dean, replete with comments on suggestions on nigh every page. I am now canceling appointments and putting off email responses until February 9, when the next (and penultimate) revisions are due back in Princeton.